Is Work Done During Adiabatic Compression of a Quantum State?

Prathyush
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Is work done by the external agency when an adiabatic change in the Hamiltonian is performed on some State ψ?
 
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Yes. We don't even need to restrict ourselves to adiabatic changes here. The change in energy of the system is the work done on the system, in classical or in quantum mechanics, essentially by definition.
 
Yes What I am confused about is if the state is superposition of energy levels, we have no adequate definition of Energy of the system.
 
I have thought of a specific situation to illustrate my problem.
Consider the case of a Particle in a infinite well, If the walls are compressed slowly and state is in a superposition of first and second excited levels, What is the work done on the walls?
One can say that the work done is the change in expectation value of the energy, But why should it be so?
 
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Insights auto threads is broken atm, so I'm manually creating these for new Insight articles. Towards the end of the first lecture for the Qiskit Global Summer School 2025, Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, Olivia Lanes (Global Lead, Content and Education IBM) stated... Source: https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/quantum-entanglement-is-a-kinematic-fact-not-a-dynamical-effect/ by @RUTA
If we release an electron around a positively charged sphere, the initial state of electron is a linear combination of Hydrogen-like states. According to quantum mechanics, evolution of time would not change this initial state because the potential is time independent. However, classically we expect the electron to collide with the sphere. So, it seems that the quantum and classics predict different behaviours!
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